U.K

It has been three years since the cover with the title ‘The advertising is me!’ caused enough curiosity among the Romanians who are part of the diaspora. I was always asked why I chose to be the character on the cover of the pilot issue, why the advertising is me and, especially, what is the reason for the existence of such a project.

In 2010, when I started to write the plan for this publication, everything came to me almost spontaneously. As in many cases, daring projects are born out of huge necessity. My necessity was for a quality press, which would reflect abroad the elites who were ‘exported’ by Romania. I still look back and smile when I think that everybody laughed at my nerve to establish an international magazine at a time of world economic crisis. They laughed, I let them laugh, and I continued my work. The communication strategy took three years, but I felt as if it was much more than that.

After a decade of work as a journalist for various media organisations in Romania, once I left the country I identified a huge gap in the diaspora’s press. I left Romania wishing to see the world. I did not lack for anything, but there was still something that was missing – I wanted something more, something better, something else… For me, it was not sufficient just to be good at what I was doing, I wanted to be excellent. To have the opportunity to see things afresh by getting away from the milieu in which I had lived more than 20 years was the best thing that happened to me, and not only professionally.

Wherever I might live, Romania is a part of me; I don’t even feel that I have left it. Romania is me, Romania is you, and all the wonderful persons I had the joy of meeting while on my frequent travels. Romania is also the other people about whom the ugly side of the press writes with a complete lack of knowledge, or those people who left their country and now trample upon it wherever they go. But I don’t want to talk about them, they are just a few; through this publishing project, I want to bring into the limelight the people of value, the elites, the people about whom the free newspapers on the Underground do not talk because ‘they don’t make the news’, as the cliché maintains.

‘The advertising is me’ was precisely the idea according to which everything starts from me, and from people like me. Romania is each of us, and if you manage to be a good model in the society where you chose to live and which hosts you, the country of origin will slowly get a new image, as you present it differently through what you are.

I want to thank everyone who believed in me, who joined me and supported me unconditionally on this ‘journey’. It is not easy to start and it is even harder to keep yourself going, and the reason which makes me never give up is exactly these superb people who also know how important it is to present Romania from a different angle.

I thank you, too, for holding this copy in your hands, and we are glad you had the curiosity to see who we are. Let’s keep in touch!